Notional Significance: Disinterment

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The entry to Bolton St cemetery is unre­mark­able: a gap in a white fence off a respect­able street, a can­opy of pines, plain crosses against a cor­rug­ated iron fence. But I know that I’m passing into a ter­rit­ory that would have the earth-magic wing of the psy­cho­geo­graph­ic­al move­ment pant­ing with occult excite­ment. Iain Sin­clair or Peter Ack­royd would have a field day with the pleth­ora of obelisks, res­on­ant names and eroded inscrip­tions, but wouldn’t that be the case with any cemetery? It’s like shoot­ing mys­tic­al fish in a semi­ot­ic bar­rel. Nev­er­the­less, cer­tain monu­ments catch my atten­tion, so I decide to play along.

There’s a broken marble column near the entrance, and at first I file this away as a symp­tom of van­dal­ism or neg­lect, but a closer exam­in­a­tion of the carving shows the break to be too clean. A shattered pil­lar seems like an obvi­ous sig­ni­fi­er (a life cut short; the futil­ity and imper­fec­tion of human endeav­our; all that Ozy­man­di­an sort of thing), but a little research unearths oth­er con­nec­tions. The Broken Column is an import­ant sym­bol in Free­ma­sonry, though per­haps a rel­at­ively recent one. What’s more, it seems that some Masons map the Three Great Pil­lars of Masonry to the Kab­bal­ist­ic Sephiroth, and when the cent­ral column of Beauty is broken, it rep­res­ents Man’s sep­ar­a­tion from divine know­ledge: the severed path­way between Beauty and the Infin­ite. But in this place it was the act of build­ing a path­way that caused a sev­er­ance, tear­ing the cemetery in two when the motor­way smashed its way through. Beauty and the Divine were cer­tainly not on the Min­istry of Works’ agenda.

As the path winds down into a severed gully, past oth­er broken columns, I remem­ber back to one of my first walks in Wel­ling­ton, what seems like many dec­ades ago. It was a gloomy, misty Sunday, with low cloud whip­ping through the tree­tops and fine rain drift­ing down through the dark foliage. The graves seemed shattered, lonely and aban­doned, over­grown by indif­fer­ent veget­a­tion, and my (shame­fully Euro­centric) ima­gin­a­tion turned this into a sci­ence fic­tion movie: a doomed colony on an ali­en world, the last remain­ing set­tlers bury­ing their dwind­ling col­leagues as the host plan­et erased their hub­rist­ic attempts at rep­lic­at­ing home. Even today, in the bright­ness of late sum­mer, the droop­ing aer­i­al pohu­tukawa roots can seem mon­strous, and by the time that I real­ise that they are also invaders here, I know it’s time to move on before my alleg­or­ies tangle them­selves into total inco­her­ence.

But first, I come across a grave that even I can see is expli­citly Mason­ic. The com­pass and set-square make that clear, even if I had to go back and look up the cap­it­al G (for God and Geo­metry, and per­haps for Gnos­is), the stone ash­lar, the tes­sel­lated pave­ment and the uneven columns topped with ter­restri­al and celes­ti­al globes. This lav­ish memori­al to Cap­tain Henry Tuck­er was erec­ted by Cap­tain Edwin Stafford, who later com­pleted their pact by join­ing him in the grave. Such ded­ic­a­tion would seem unusu­al today without a more intim­ate con­nec­tion, and I won­der wheth­er a dif­fer­ent inter­pret­a­tion could be put upon the two upstand­ing columns than the Boaz and Jachin of Mason­ic lore. But it would be pruri­ent and point­less to spec­u­late about what the Her­ald called “the fine feel­ings, and the rare sen­ti­ment” between these two men. The pil­lars have been toppled in the past by fall­ing trees and ‘60s yob­bos (“because there’s noth­ing else to do in Wel­ling­ton on a Sunday”), but they escaped the bull­dozers. Their friend­ship can stand on its own terms.

Oth­er monu­ments were not so lucky. Mass graves are not some­thing one expects in New Zea­l­and — they seem to belong to anoth­er world, a world of pogroms and plague pits — but the remains of 3,693 people are crammed into a “memori­al vault” on the oth­er side of the high­way, their ori­gin­al tomb­stones scattered through the remainder of the cemetery. Time is a com­mod­ity that we can only value when it’s in our grasp: we’ll will­ingly mangle or erase the past to save a few seconds in the present, all the while burn­ing through the resources of the future. Whole books could be writ­ten on the saga of the Foot­hill Motor­way, but for the moment I’ll just men­tion that in 1965 a Coun­cil­lor Mor­ris­on was repor­ted as say­ing that “although some oth­er trans­port sys­tem might be tech­nic­ally prefer­able the import­ant con­sid­er­a­tion was that the Nation­al Roads Board had the money and was pre­pared to spend it.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

But the cata­stroph­ic changes wrought by the motor­way con­struc­tion were not the only reas­on why Mar­garet H. Aling­ton called her his­tory of the cemetery Unquiet Earth. From the start, this buri­al ground was fraught with con­ten­tion, chaos and per­turb­a­tion. Even before the land was gran­ted, the plans were beset by sec­tari­an squabbles and high mor­al dudgeon, and the land was fre­quently assaul­ted by encroach­ments, road-build­ing and park con­struc­tion as well as the nat­ur­al haz­ards of fire, wind and land­slides. Exhuma­tion is noth­ing new, since over­crowding often res­ul­ted in the acci­dent­al unearth­ing of unmarked remains when new graves were being dug. It was alleged that some of these were quietly and unce­re­mo­ni­ously dumped, and in one dis­turb­ing instance a child’s coffin lay in the adja­cent stream for years. On many occa­sions the Inspect­or of Nuis­ances was called in to invest­ig­ate “putre­fact­ive fer­ment­a­tion”, “human cor­rup­tion” and “foul mias­mata”, and the sex­tons often had to battle van­dal­ism, rub­bish dump­ing from oppor­tun­ist­ic neigh­bours and the noc­turn­al occur­rence of what were dec­or­ously described as “impro­pri­et­ies”. Some of those activ­it­ies may still be pop­u­lar, if the infam­ous Wel­ling­tonista “Spot the Dog” post is any­thing to go by, and per­haps the incon­gru­ous amphi­theatre that over­looks the mass grave some­times attracts an audi­ence keen on impro­vised erot­ic theatre. Today, the only action is a pair of con­ser­vat­ively-dressed men prac­ti­cing Tai Chi moves, their grace­ful move­ments tra­cing slow arcs above the rest­less rest­ing place of thou­sands.

Near the memori­al , there’s a grand old tree fes­tooned with epi­phyt­ic ferns and mosses. I once took this as a wry sym­bol of post-colo­ni­al­ism: the Eng­lish oak suc­cumb­ing to nat­ive eco­sys­tems; the invader reclaimed by indi­gineity. Now I find that the tree has a name and a his­tory. It is the “Sel­wyn Oak”, sup­posedly planted by the eponym­ous Bish­op, and even though he returned to the old coun­try, his asso­ci­ation with the found­ing of the cemetery war­rants some recog­ni­tion here. He had a repu­ta­tion for reli­gious tol­er­ance and fair deal­ings with Maori, but there is a dark­er note in his reac­tion to the drift away from “pure” Anglic­an­ism towards the syn­cret­ism of Hauhau: “watch­ing over the rem­nant of a decay­ing people and the rem­nant of a decay­ing faith”. In that con­text, one might indeed read a defi­ant response in the sight of lush nat­ive climbers engulf­ing the rigid Anglic­an limbs of the good Bishop’s oak — though in that case, I’d rather not think about the omin­ous creep of Tra­des­can­tia around its roots.

“It is a waste of time to deny the past. It is there, behind us and in us.” That’s what Aling­ton wrote in her epi­logue to Unquiet Earth, and it’s thoughts like that that keep me look­ing for con­nec­tions. Even over­int­er­pret­a­tion can be fer­tile, an ima­gin­at­ive tangle of roots and branches that treats the past not as dry fac­tu­al bones but as liv­ing seeds still cap­able of engen­der­ing new stor­ies. But I’m stumped by the shiny black cube that marks Her­bert J Wil­li­ams’ grave at the base of the tree: it bears Mason­ic insignia, but I can only link it to the use of black cubes to secretly veto an unlucky applic­ant. Has Wil­li­ams been posthum­ously black­balled, barred from the Craft in the after­life?

I’m on safer ground with the more expli­cit signs that lit­ter this stretch of com­pens­at­ory park­land: plaques that cel­eb­rate and com­mem­or­ate, though some­times in rather token­ist­ic ways. The install­a­tion of a plaque “ded­ic­ated to the memory of per­sons who have con­trib­uted towards the bet­ter­ment of the New Zea­l­and envir­on­ment” in a place that has been so thor­oughly desec­rated is so far bey­ond irony that I can do little more than leave the thought to fester by itself. On the oth­er hand, as motor­way environs go, this land­scape has been remark­ably well-handled. The com­bin­a­tion of Bru­tal­ist energy and the Eng­lish pic­tur­esque tra­di­tion (foot­paths mean­der­ing lazily through bosky glades, while a slender raw con­crete foot­bridge soars and curls over­head) could have seemed jar­ring, but it goes far bey­ond the usu­al “mit­ig­a­tion” plant­ing, and des­pite its con­cep­tu­al con­tra­dic­tions it seems to have settled into some­thing resem­bling charm.

We have Helmut Ein­horn to thank for that. A fierce oppon­ent of the motor­way pro­ject, he was ini­tially shunted out of the Min­istry of Works to a harm­less second­ment, then assigned what must have been a bit­ter task: “coordin­at­ing the archi­tec­tur­al and aes­thet­ic con­sid­er­a­tions” of his hated road. Would it have been more prin­cipled to refuse com­pli­city with a brief that he believed to be fun­da­ment­ally dam­aging and wrong-headed? Or would that have been futile, com­pared to the oppor­tun­ity to influ­ence the out­come for the bet­ter, even in what he thought must have been a super­fi­cial way? Some of his efforts failed: a pro­posed piazza across the motor­way, com­plete with exhib­i­tion build­ings and relo­cated head­stones, was quietly down­graded to a nar­row ped­es­tri­an bridge, though the rein­for­cing for its sup­ports still lie hid­den between the lanes of the high­way. But the com­bin­a­tion of thought­ful plant­ing, subtle tex­tures and occa­sion­ally dra­mat­ic engin­eer­ing brings a touch of émigré flair to even some of the grim­mest stretches of the motorway’s path. I appre­ci­ate the crisply geo­met­ric­al dynam­ism of the stan­chions as I walk through the oth­er­wise sub-Milton Keynes car­park between Bowen St and Bal­lantrae Place, avert my eyes from a viol­ently pas­tel col­li­sion of Tuscan vil­las and Sydney ter­races, then sweat my way up the nar­row steps to Hill St.

From the over­bridge, I get the merest glimpse of what should be the most nation­ally sig­ni­fic­ant build­ing of the jour­ney: the Bee­hive. If you’re look­ing for Mason­ic sym­bol­ism, then it’s hard to go past bee­hives, which are among the emblems presen­ted to a Mas­ter Mason. They rep­res­ent the api­an vir­tues of duty, industry and cooper­a­tion — which should pro­duce pre­dict­able snig­gers, par­tic­u­larly among those who find it far easi­er to sat­ir­ise all politi­cians as venal, indol­ent and bick­er­ing than to actu­ally engage with polit­ic­al thought. At least one con­spir­acy the­or­ist has gone bey­ond point­ing out the Mason­ic con­nec­tion to sug­gest­ing a resemb­lance to the Tower of Babel, though that author’s patho­lo­gic­al par­eido­lia also extends to find­ing all-see­ing eyes through­out Civic Square and child-sac­ri­fi­cing Illu­minati in Cap­it­al E. I rethink my atti­tude to ima­gin­at­ive over­int­er­pret­a­tion.

Sir Basil Spence — who may have sketched his Bee­hive design on a nap­kin, though his earli­er, more detailed draw­ings show that it was far more thor­oughly thought-through than the anec­dote sug­gests — was prob­ably not a Free­ma­son, but the com­mis­sion­ing PM Keith Holyoake cer­tainly was. Of course, not all that long ago it would have been odd if a Prime Min­is­ter or Gov­ernor Gen­er­al were not a mem­ber: all of the excit­able occult­ist para­noia and New World Order wing­nut­tery obscures the fact that the Craft is at heart little more than an old-boys’ club for well-con­nec­ted white men. There’s far more psy­cho­geo­graph­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance in the archi­tec­tur­al moves that Spence actu­ally inten­ded (a round build­ing as a “peg” to anchor the curve of Bowen St; tur­bine imagery as a late mani­fest­a­tion of Modernism’s cel­eb­ra­tion of heavy industry), and more polit­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance in the very real con­sti­tu­tion­al cluster of Par­lia­ment, judi­ciary and Treas­ury, than in the most ingeni­ous crypto-Mason­ic fantas­ies.

Bey­ond Hill St, the motor­way takes a slow curve to the right, shift­ing align­ment from the foot­hills route to the old Thorndon gully, fall­ing in line with the long straight slash of the Wel­ling­ton Fault. I flow into the trans­ition, ready for the next stage.